First, Privacy International, a leading privacy watchdog, ranked Google worst in its world survey of Internet Service Companies stating that Google has "an entrenched hostility to privacy." Juxtapose this "hostility to privacy" with the fact that most people consider their personal health records to be among their most intimate and private information.

Second, "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Reconcile this business purpose, philosophy and core competency to make most everything it touches digitally available to the world... with the 180 degree counter-purpose of e-health records which is to limit access to this infomation most extremely.

Listen to Google's CEO in his own words about Google's ambitions to know everything about you:

"Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation. “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”"

Knowing your personal health history in every detail would certainly help Google advise you on all matters of life wouldn't it?

Third, Google has a very checkered past when it comes to respect for people's privacy:

Per the complaint, "A January 2006 poll of 1,000 Google users found that 89% of respondents think their search terms are kept private, and 77% believed that Google searches do not reveal their personal identities.31 These numbers indicate that Google’s practices violate the public’s expectation of privacy with respect to the collection and use of search history data."

The common thread behind the "Open" movement is that digital content on the web should not be owned, but should be shared and available to everyone to encourage collaboration, creativity and innovation.

How can we trust that Google's deep philosophical belief in "openness", i.e. that anything private should be made public, won't sometime in the future be applied to e-health records?

Bottomline: Google's world-leading "hostility to privacy" and abysmal privacy record should give pause to even the most trusting souls...